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Comment by xwdv | Hacker News Reader

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This ethos "if its important to you bring your own" is literally the opposite of user-first development. We've strayed deeply and meaningfully into premiumization and only the consumer (human beings, like us) will suffer.

If different users want different features, should the product include them all and charge each user for all the features? That also doesn't sound like user-first development.

I've not used AM in a car in decades. I'd guess Ford has looked at their customers and reached this decision based on evidence.

So it may be likely that their users prefer spending money on feature X instead of AM.

If there's a world in which emergency information is shared with the populous using AM radio, then it should be considered a bare minimum because human beings, buying the cars and selling the cars, require access to this information.

Its literally information that can lead to connection + survival as indicated by the comments below and so I'm gonna say MVP worthy until the body we say governs all of us provides a reliable alternative.

There is a reliable alternative, it's already where such items are broadcast, and more people use it than AM by orders of magnitude. Next you'll tell me we need HAM radio and Morse code.

Having AM radio is a safety feature not unlike seat-belts. In case of sever weather, thunderstorms, etc cell-phone service can be disrupted and UHF coverage is not great in rural areas. AM radio is the only way to get information in these cases. Not having AM radio by default is like making seat-belts optional.

Since 1975, seatbelts are credited with saving hundreds of thousands of lives. Try as I might, I can find zero deaths attributed to lacking AM radio in a car.

These two things are no where near alike. No one will take this line of argument seriously.

> Since 1975, seatbelts are credited with saving hundreds of thousands of lives.

It is much easier to attribute outcome of a car accident to presence or absence of seat-belts. It is much harder to determine why a certain car ended up in the path of an active hurricane or twister. So yes, comparing seat-belts to AM radios is somewhat of a stretch, indeed. But if you heed FIMA recommendations and warnings they always tell you to have AM radio handy to receive important and potentially life-saving information. You are encouraged to have battery powered AM radio at home. And if you are in the car it is no-brainier to have AM radio, preferably already built-in.

>It is much harder to determine why a certain car ended up in the path of an active hurricane or twister

Around 100 people in the US die in a twister per year, including those with AM radios, and these are extremely rarely in cars. So quite reasonably there are less than 3 people killed in cars by twisters per year, and likely zero would have been changed by AM radio or not in the car.

Around 40k people are killed in cars per year, including some with seatbelts. Around 15k lives are estimated saved by seatbelts per year.

So, you're really trying to compare on order of 0 lives saved per year in a car for AM versus 15,000? And then to invoke yet more ridiculous fear you're now throwing in twisters, which adds around, let's see, 0 deaths to the equation?

Again, making such outlandish comparisons as if they're at all equivalent will make people ignore your argument. As I now will since you seem hell bent on claiming somehow AM radio is a safety issue yet have twice made honestly innumerate arguemtns for it.

What's wrong with offering an AM radio as an option, though?

It's the exponential SKU proliferation problem. There's good reason why manufacturers like VW bundle most feature choices into a small number of trim tiers.

If the cost to get them working properly in EV is more costly, then it's not worth it.

I suspect Ford doesn't want to throw money away, but to optimize sales and profit. Unlikely they'd do this without some pretty good reasons.

The opposite of user-first development sounds pretty good then. Finally, cars built according to how an automaker wants instead of as a checklist of things to attract as many customer dollars as possible.

Yeah, an it'd be great if it was also the automaker who paid and drove the cars, right?

AM radio is a niche use case. I've never used AM radio in my life. User first development means that you need to include every niche feature a user may want.

I’ve never used a wheelchair ramp but don’t mind that buildings that I use have them.

This move is just laziness by automotive manufacturers not wanting to address their negative externalities (spewing RF into the local environment), disguised as efficiency/progress.

Right?! Gimme AM, keep your SIM/WiFi away

My state (Washington) actively uses specific AM stations for traffic and weather alerts.

California too. Google may show that traffic jam, accident stuff, but AM frequency has repeated goverment or official information.

Phones (carplay / android auto) have replaced this. Google maps can show a much better picture of the current traffic conditions than a radio broadcast.

That's great when you never leave a 10 square mile bubble in the Bay Area.

There's a > 40 mile stretch of state route 542 (mt baker highway) in WA where there is no cell signal. Zip. Nada. No matter the carrier. And this road can carry nasty rapidly changing weather conditions in the winter. Your iPhone 26 will continue to proudly display "No Service." So, no, it has not replaced this.

Same with large stretches of Highway 50 in California - which is exactly where you need the weather alerts most, due to snow. No cell signal.

By the time iPhone 26 comes out there will be a cell tower or two out there.

iPhone 14 has satellite connectivity for emergencies, other handset makers are doing this too. in 10 years the picture will look much different, and i doubt any phone will ever have truly “no service” again.

So it'll be unnecessarily dangerous for just 10 years?

No, I don't think $200 phones are getting satellite connectivity.

T-mobile's claim is that by 2024 their customers will get emergency satellite connectivity on their existing handsets, even cheap $200 ones. They might need to be new $200 handsets in order to get the software support, but the hardware support is supposedly there already. The specific language T-mobile uses is the "vast majority of smartphones already on T‑Mobile’s network" which sure sounds like it includes $200 phones. With the help of Starlink, T-mobile is going to put cellphone towers in space, pointed down, and your existing cellphone will be able to pick up the signal and the satellites will be sensitive enough to hear the cellphone's transmissions.

T-mobile's service will be limited to various forms of texting and possibly also Twitter, which is used by many emergency departments to broadcast information, which is slightly different than the iPhone's offering of dire emergency service coverage. Still doesn't replace AM radio use cases though.

https://www.t-mobile.com/news/un-carrier/t-mobile-takes-cove...

Satellite connectivity for emergencies will be just that, for emergencies. Technology will have to progress greatly (which, 10 years could do it) before "for emergencies" will include "you get data connectivity to tell you details of the road conditions" like you're imagining. In the interim, AM radios are still necessary.

> Google maps can show a much better picture of the current traffic conditions than a radio broadcast.

There is no cell phone signal in many areas.

> Google maps can show a much better picture

'Can' is putting in a lot of work, there.

Google insisted on showing roads continuing to be closed well after e.g. CalTrans issued a statement otherwise and reopened them, after the last bout of winter storms in early March.

The response time to displaying or ending closures related to wrecks on less well traveled roads is abysmal as well.

Only if you have an internet connection.

But it's a feature that comes in quite handy, for only a few dollars of manufacturing cost. I tune to road status AM radio all the time when driving over the mountains

A few dollars in manufacturing costs per vehicle easily adds up to millions.

And a few tens of thousands of dollars of revenue per vehicle adds up to billions.

There are a bunch of example replies about how AM is used as a direct life safety device and you and others seem to keep simping for a corp’s ability to profit.

Literally choosing profit over people.

AM is not replaced by FM, Cell, wifi, iphone 14 sat emerg use… it’s a device that also states use in service to the citizens.

It should be mandatory due to the nature of Khz bandwith signal propagation over the Mhz fm band.

Ford is infamous for this kind of stuff, see the Ford Pinto:

> Ever wonder what your life is worth in dollars? Perhaps $10 million? Ford has a better idea: $200,000.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/1977/09/pinto-madness/

Ford already made the decision for you. If you need an AM radio, bring your own. They are about $10 on Amazon. Most people don’t need it. As a bonus, you can take an AM radio with you as opposed to leaving it in your car, so when you have to run away and hide under some bridge to escape a tornado you could have the radio with you.

>decision

Right. I get that. I think it’s a misguided decision. But I get it. Because I understand that profit is their only driving motivation (no pun intended).

What I don’t grok is how many replies there are here quite literally picking on those people who demonstrate legitimate life safety uses for the AM band, Some of those by the State providing a service.

Yes, do not buy this if you decide you need AM as a backup. I get that.

Heck, I already won’t buy cars that can be disabled remotely. “Old man yells at cloud” memes aside.

Just because a company’s motivations don’t match what a niche customer wants, doesn’t mean their only motivation is profit. They certainly have other motivations beyond profit, just none that you may care about. Consider the Ford Bronco, where one of the motivations was to beat the Wrangler. Given their engineering decisions, profit was certainly not the only motivation.

> only motivation

You fail to understand what “companies” are under capitalism - they exist for profit, only.

> beat the wrangler

For .. fun? That’s not gonna make shareholders happy.

They did it for profit.

engineering decisions in corporations are driven by profit.

Not to be pedantic. But, in my opinion, it’s important to *not humanize corporations* because they are not humans.

On the contrary, corporations are nothing but humans. Thousands of humans working together to achieve human goals. And if what humans mostly want is profit, then corporations will want profit, but occasionally they want other things too. Power, revenge, prestige.

You’re applying human emotion to the actions of humans within a corporation and sure, that tracks.

From a purely mathematical shareholder ROI standpoint, a “continuous expansion” facet of capitalism, and the purchase of labor from humans who do not themselves own or control the corporate decisions - there is only ever ROI that is considered.

>Ford already made the decision for you. If you need an AM radio, bring your own.

Alternatively, simply don't buy a Ford....

What's interesting about this is that the cost of an AM radio is essentially nothing, Ford owners (specifically trucks) are often very conservative which includes their views on truck design (see past Ford updates and reporting), and often rural - so exactly the people who are most likely to use AM radio. So Ford must either be clueless in alienating their customers or believe that the tradeoffs are worth this move.

Or buy an old car. Since it appears to be impossible to buy new cars that don't phone home or have those horrific touch screen console displays, this is what I expect I'll be doing for the rest of my life.

On the other hand, if it's that important for safety, people shouldn't have to bring their own.

They don’t come with built-in chains or snow tires, either.

Chains and tires are something you use over time and replace so they can't be built-in. In this case anyway, because special purpose vehicles do come with deep track tires by default.

On other roads you also want to not have chains or snow tires. You never want to not have AM radio - it doesn't matter if you don't use it and it's basically free given the car cost.

(it's also free as in, the cost of removing it and redesign was likely higher than just shipping it as-is in the next few thousand of cars)

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